


Like a Screwball Out of Left Field

by boopinbabbit



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Multi, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-26
Updated: 2014-02-26
Packaged: 2018-01-13 21:37:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1241581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boopinbabbit/pseuds/boopinbabbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Roy is really bad at assessing his own feelings, Jason’s long-term planning skills suck, and Tim just sort of rolls with the emotional whiplash he keeps getting from them both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Screwball Out of Left Field

It’s not until Robin mentions being the third person to take that name that Roy realizes there was a second. To be fair, he had been a popsicle for nearly eight years and Robin (the first) had been nothing more than a short kid with a big attitude who liked to do handstands on top of light posts and thought the laws of physics were more like guidelines.

He hadn’t even stopped to consider that the differences he’d attributed to the joys of growing up (self-doubt, small bouts of anxiety, awkwardly moving away when Roy had tried to sling an arm over his shoulder in congratulations on a mission well done) could in fact be the result of this Robin being a completely different person than the ten-year-old he had known before.

In retrospect, the kid was way too much of a shrimp to be eighteen. But hey, he’d been on ice for EIGHT YEARS, give him a break, all right?

—————-

There’s a hologram-statue of Robin (the second) in the grotto along with several other fallen heroes Roy never met. He wonders if they would have put up one for him if the clone hadn’t-

"They wanted to," Robin tells him, cutting off his thoughts like a knife through his fucking heart as the kid stares up at his predecessor with an almost reverent look. "Red Arrow wouldn’t let them."

"Figures," Roy mutters. "Would’ve been awkward to come back to anyways."

The younger boy makes a small non-committal noise, eyes never leaving the face of the hologram in front of him. For a brief moment, Roy finds himself wishing someone would look at him like that, before he squashes it down and walks away.

———————

He meets Robin the second at a prison camp in some third world country Roy can’t be bothered to remember the name of since he’s probably going to be dead in a few hours anyways. Except, he’s not Robin anymore and Roy only has a few moments to wrap his mind around the fact that he’s being rescued by a guy who is apparently not as dead as he had been previously led to believe before the two of them are hauling ass to get out of there before the whole structure comes down around their ears.

"Rescue might be overselling it a bit," Jason Todd tells him with a sardonic grin before shooting someone over Roy’s shoulder and dragging him into an old beat-up jeep and flooring it.

——————-

Kori’ander is a welcome respite from Jason’s “I hate everything” attitude even if she treats Roy like more of a personal plaything than an actual person (he doesn’t take it personally, that’s just how she is he’s come to realize). She tugs him along behind her and makes him explain things and gets frustrated with him when he doesn’t do things exactly how she says, but he can see the fond look she gives him and knows that he could count on her if he really needed to (if she wasn’t too busy or something).

Jason is harder to deal with. Especially at three in the morning when he hasn’t slept in a few days and is staring at the cork-board he set up in the kitchen like he kind of wants to set it or something else on fire (like maybe Roy). There are scrawled-out notes and pictures of his former teammates and successor and Roy wants to ask but he doesn’t.

He kind of wishes he had though when he finds out about Robin.

——————-

"The kid practically fucking idolized you," he says, the couch standing in between them like it could be a potential barrier if need be.

"It’s not his fault Batman replaced you."

Ten minutes later, they need a new couch because the old one is full of bullet holes and Roy is pretending he didn’t see tears in Jason’s eyes when the other man stormed out.

Because that’s how friendship works he guesses.

—————-

He runs into Robin on his way out of the hospital. Or rather, the kid smiles in the face of his confused “Shouldn’t you be in-“, grabs him by the arm (“I told you I’d only be a few minutes. You didn’t have to come in for me.”), and fucking hauls ass out of the building as fast as possible.

It’s an almost surreal case of deja vu that gets them to the parking lot before Roy remembers that there was a reason Robin was in the hospital in the first place. The kid gives him a look that conveys the fact that he really doesn’t have room to talk and the red-haired man shuts his mouth and lets the kid drag him down the street to a coffee house.

He then proceeds to grill him on all things Jason Todd for the next thirty minutes and Roy wonders if being insane is a Bat-family requirement or just a side-effect of dealing with Batman for too long.

—————

Jason isn’t home when he gets back, but Kory is, and so is a new sofa and love-seat set that takes up more than it’s fair share of their living room. The stare she gives him makes him kind of want to crawl into a hole and die. So instead he sits down beside her and asks what’s on Netflix.

They’re in the middle of an intense Real Housewives of New Jersey marathon when their third teammate finally comes in, tossing a KFC bucket at his face before throwing himself down onto the other side of the couch. It’s as close to an apology as he’s going to get, Roy figures.

Doesn’t stop him from turning the kitchen faucet on the next morning when Jay’s in the shower though. (Yeah he’s got a death-wish, so what?)

—————-

"He….really isn’t all that bad," Jason says one day, staring down into the pot of soup he is attempting to cook like it holds all the answers to the universe (or like he’s avoiding Roy’s knowing smirk). "Shut up."

"I didn’t say anything."

Jason throws a fork at him and Roy nearly falls over laughing as he dodges out of the line of fire. (He’s starting to sense a pattern here.)

"So y’ gonna ask him out or what?" he asks from the relative safety of under the kitchen table and nearly receives a boot to the face for his trouble.

—————

He’s not sure how he feels about it when Jay actually does take Robin (Tim. Call him Tim, Roy, it’s less confusing that way) out on a date (“it’s NOT” both of them had insisted with varying levels of homicidal rage and awkward protesting). Rather than think about it too much, Roy squashes the feeling down with a bottle of rum and attempts to make out with Kory until she tells him to quit being a baby monkey and shoves him away to watch Dancing With the Stars.

"You’re wasting everyone’s time," she tells him as "Can’t Live Without You" plays in the background. "Just ask them for a threesome."

"I wasn’t-"

She levels him with a look that screams “sure you weren’t” and Roy decides he really needs some fresh air before he passes out. Her knowing smile follows him out the window (because who uses doors anymore?) and all the way to third street where he runs into a rather flustered looking Tim and smug-as-hell Jason.

It’s about that moment that Roy realizes his life is actually just a really bad sit-com complete with laugh track at his expense and wonders why he’s surprised by that at all.

—————

He suffers through Kory’s disapprovingly bored looks for about a week before he finally breaks down and does something about it.

And because he’s Roy Harper, it all goes south quicker than an Arrow family reunion (he should know. He’s been to three since he got back).

————-

It starts with Tim, because somehow Roy thought the kid would be the easier of the two.

"You….want to what?" the third Robin asks, giving him the strangest look ever. Like he’s not sure if Roy is pulling his leg or not and kind of hopes he is.

So Roy plays it off like a joke (because yeah he’s an ass, but not that much of one) and tries not to be too hurt by the look of confused relief on Tim’s face.

————-

He never gets the chance to actually pose the question to Jason, because the other man gets to it first.

"You have to break that kind of shit to the baby bird gently," he informs Roy after he shoves the redhead up against a wall and kisses the sense out of him. "Or you break his brain."

"Hypocrite," Roy mutters, giving him a dazed look (part of which might be due to the minor concussion Jason may have just given him).

His friend just grins and kisses him again.

————-

Kissing Tim is considerably less violent, but still fucking awesome. 10/10 will be doing again.


End file.
